Performance Trade-off in Inseparable Joint Communications and Sensing: A Pareto Analysis

Joint communications and sensing integrate both functions in the same waveform, in order to improve the efficiency of spectrum access. Compared with existing studies on linearly superimposed communication and sensing waveforms, a nonlinear and inseparable integration of both functions can leverage the compatibility of communications and radar. In this paper, given a set of waveforms, the performances of communications and radar sensing are analyzed in the frequency spectrum domain, based on which the trade-off, characterized by the Pareto front, between the two functions is derived. Numerical simulations are carried out to evaluate the performances and characterize the trade-off. The results show that the conflict between communications and sensing is marginal, given the setup in the paper.